This disclosure relates generally to manufacturing equipment and more particularly to a system for monitoring manufacturing plant machinery.
Various diagnostic devices are known which monitor or determine a fault in general purpose machinery. Examples of this can be found in the following U.S. Pat. No. 7,010,445 entitled “Automated Fault Diagnosis Device and Method” which issued to Battenberg et al. on Mar. 7, 2006; U.S. Pat. No. 6,549,869 entitled “Expert Analysis Modules for Machine Testing” which issued to Piety et al. on Apr. 15, 2003; U.S. Pat. No. 6,839,660 entitled “On-Line Rotating Equipment Monitoring Device” which issued to Eryurek on Jan. 4, 2005; and U.S. Pat. No. 7,539,549 entitled “Motorized System Integrated Control and Diagnostics Using Vibration, Pressure, Temperature, Speed, and/or Current Analysis” which issued to Discenzo et al. on May 26, 2009. All of these patents are incorporated by reference herein. These conventional devices also typically employ a rigid set of programmed rules to determine health of the machine.
In cement manufacturing plants, machine performance is typically monitored by one or more technicians physically walking or driving from machine to machine and either visually observing operating performance at various points for each machine or collecting sensor data through a hand-held data collector at each machine during the walk by inspection. Some of these machines may be at least one mile away from each other. The collected data is subsequently downloaded to an off-line database for later analysis by an operator. This physical walk by monitoring is very time consuming and costly, and does not allow for easily managed and timely analysis of the sensed machine data.
Various alarm and temperature fault detection systems have been proposed for use in kiln bearing condition and electric motor monitoring. For example, reference should be made to A. Henningsen et al., “Intelligent Alarm Handling In Cement Plants—Lessons Learned From The Nuclear Industry,” IEEE, 0-7803-0960-x/93, p. 165 (1993), and J. Blaney, “Communication, Protection And Diagnostics For Cement Power Systems,” IEEE, 0-7803-0960-x/93, p. 85 (1993). These proposed systems, however are very crude and do very little, if any, automatic calculation and analysis of the monitored information. Instead, they rely on the operator to manually analyze the information to determine problem causation which will quickly overload the operator with too much data and prevent real-time monitoring, especially if many machines are involved.
In accordance with the present invention, a system for monitoring plant equipment is provided. Another aspect provides an automated analysis system wherein software instructions operably analyze sensor data and extract specific spectrum related values to determine mechanical problems in multiple machines. In another aspect, a cement manufacturing system includes sensors for sensing vibration conditions of cement making machines. A further aspect provides a central computer connected to vibration sensors associated with cement making machines, where software instructions perform real-time comparisons and machine performance determinations, and/or evolutionary learning calculations, based at least in part on sensed signals. A method of using machines to manufacture cement, including detecting characteristics associated with a machine and then determining if an undesirable machine condition exists, is also provided.
The present invention is advantageous over traditional devices since the present invention allows for essentially instantaneous, real-time data analysis by a centralized computer of the sensed machine operating conditions. This will save significant labor time and expense while also greatly improving the accuracy and timeliness of machine monitoring and maintenance. Certain aspects of the present system also advantageously employ evolutionary learning calculations to improve sensed data analysis and more accurate identification of machine problems. Furthermore, certain aspects of the present system allow for significantly reduced hardware costs by employing a switch matrix and multiplexer computer-to-sensor connection, which inexpensively proves at least 50, and more preferably 64, communication channels. Various aspects of the present system advantageously interface with a hand-held data collector, on-line databases and/or off-line databases, using hard-wired or wireless communications. The present system is ideally suited for use in cement manufacturing machinery, such as cement making kilns, crushers, conveyors, fans and the like. Additional advantages and features of the present invention will become apparent from the following description and appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.